On the Face of the Waters Part 10

between us, and Mighty Murri-am herself to see it grow," he echoed.

"Is the Huzoor satisfied?"

The Englishman knew enough of Bunjarah oaths to be sure that he had, at least, the cream of them; besides, a hundred rupees went far in the purchase of good faith. So that matter was settled, and he felt it to be a distinct relief; for during the last day or two he had been casting about for a fair start rather aimlessly. In truth, he had underrated the gap little Zora's death would make in his life, and had been in a way bewildered to find himself haunting the empty nest on the terraced roof in forlorn, sentimental fas.h.i.+on. The sooner, therefore, that he left Lucknow the better. So, as the Bunjarah had told him the caravan was starting the very next morning, he hastily completed his few preparations, and having sent Tara word of his intention, went, after the moon had risen, to lock the doors on the past idyl and take the key of the garden-house back to its owner; for he himself had always lodged, in European fas.h.i.+on, near the Palace.

The garden, as he entered it, lay peaceful as ever; so utterly unchanged from what he remembered it on many balmy moonlit nights, that he could not help looking up once more, as if expectant of that tinsel flutter, that soft welcome, "_Khush-amud-und Huzrut_." Strange!

So far as he was concerned the idyl might be beginning; but for her?

All unconsciously, as he paused, his thought found answer in one spoken word--the Persian equivalent for "it is finished," which has such a finality in its short syllables:

"KHUTM."

"Khutm." The echo came from Tara's voice, but it had a ring in it which made him turn, antic.i.p.ating some surprise. She was standing not far off, below the plinth, as he was, having stepped out from the shadow of the trees at his approach, and she was swathed from head to foot in the white veil of orthodox widowhood, which encircled her face like a cere-cloth. Even in the moonlight he could see the excitement in her face, the glitter in the large, wild eyes.

"Tara!" he exclaimed sharply, his experience warning him of danger, "what does this mean?"

"That the end has come; the end at last!" she cried theatrically; every fold of her drapery, though she stood stiff as a corpse, seeming to be instinct with fierce vitality.

He changed his tone at once, perceiving that the danger might be serious. "You mean that your service is at an end," he said quietly.

"I told you that some days ago. Also that your pay would be continued because of your goodness to her--to the dead. I advised your returning north, nearer your own people, but you are free to go or stay. Do you want anything more? If you do, be quick, please, for I am in a hurry."

His coolness, his failure to remark on the evident meaning of her changed dress, calmed her somewhat.

"I want nothing," she replied sullenly. "A _suttee_ wants nothing in this world, and I am _suttee_. I have been the master's servant for grat.i.tude's sake--now I am the servant of G.o.d for righteousness'

sake." So far she had, spoken as if the dignified words had been pre-arranged; now she paused in a sort of wistful anger at the indifference on his face. The words meant so much to her, and, as she ceased from them, their controlling power seemed to pa.s.s also, and she flung out her arms wildly, then brought them down in stinging blows upon her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"I am _suttee_. Yes! I am _suttee!_ Reject me not again, ye s.h.i.+ning Ones! reject me not again."

The cry was full of exalted resolve and despair. It made Jim Douglas step up to her, and seizing both hands, hold them fast.

"Don't be a fool, Tara!" he said sternly. "Tell me, sensibly, what all this means. Tell me what you are going to do."

His touch seemed to scorch her, for she tore herself away from it vehemently; yet it seemed also to quiet her, and she watched him with somber eyes for a minute ere replying: "I am going to Holy Gunga.

Where else should a _suttee_ go? The Water will not reject me as the Fire did, since, before G.o.d! I am _suttee_. As the master knows,"--her voice held a pa.s.sionate appeal,--"I have been _suttee_ all these long years. Yet now I have given up all--all!"

With a swift gesture, full of womanly grace, but with a sort of protest against such grace in its utter abandonment and self-forgetfulness, she flung out her arms once more. This time to raise the shrouding veil from her head and shoulders. Against this background of white gleaming in the moonlight, her new-shaven skull showed death-like, ghastly. Jim Douglas recoiled a step, not from the sight itself, but because he knew its true meaning; knew that it meant self-immolation if she were left to follow her present bent. She would simply go down to the Ganges and drown herself. An inconceivable state of affairs, beyond all rational understanding; but to be reckoned with, nevertheless, as real, inevitable.

"What a pity!" he said, after a moment's pause had told him that it would be well to try and take the starch out of her resolution by fair means or foul, leaving its cause for future inquiry. "You had such nice hair. I used to admire it very much."

Her hands fell slowly, a vague terror and remorse came to her eyes; and he pursued the advantage remorselessly. "Why did you cut it off?"

He knew, of course, but his affected ignorance took the color, the intensity from the situation, by making her feel her _coup de theatre_ had failed.

"The Huzoor must know," she faltered, anger and disappointment and vague doubt in her tone, while her right hand drew itself over the shaven skull as if to make sure there was no mistake. "I am _suttee_--" The familiar word seemed to bring certainty with it, and she went on more confidentially. "So I cut it all off and it lies there, ready, as I am, for purification."

She pointed to the upper step leading to the plinth, where, as on an altar, lay all her worldly treasures, arranged carefully with a view to effect. The crimson scarf she had always worn was folded--with due regard to the display of its embroidered edge--as a cloth, and at either end of it lay a pile of trumpery personal adornments, each topped and redeemed from triviality by a gold wristlet and anklet. In the center, set round by fallen orange-blossoms, rose a great heap of black hair, snakelike in glistening coils. The simple pomposity of the arrangement was provocative of smiles, the wistful eagerness of the face watching its effect on the master was provocative of tears. Jim Douglas, feeling inclined for both, chose the former deliberately; he even managed a derisive laugh as he stepped up to the altar and laid sacrilegious hands on the hair. Tara gave a cry of dismay, but he was too quick for her, and dangled a long lock before her very eyes, in jesting, but stern decision.

"That settles it, Tara. You can go to Gunga now if you like, and bathe and be as holy as you like. But there will be no Fire or Water. Do you understand?"

She looked at the hand holding the hair with the oddest expression, though she said obstinately, "I shall drown if I choose."

"Why should you choose?" he asked. "You know as well as I that it is too late for any good to you or others. The Fire and Water should have come twelve years ago. The priests won't say so of course. They want fools to help them in this fuss about the new law. Ah! I thought so!

They have been at you, have they? Well, be a fool if you like, and bring them pennies at Benares as a show. You cannot do anything else.

You can't even sacrifice your hair really, so long as I have this bit." He began to roll the lock round his finger, neatly.

"What is the Huzoor going to do with it?" she asked, and the oddness had invaded her voice.

"Keep it," he retorted. "And by all, these thirty thousand and odd G.o.ds of yours, I'll say it was a love-token if I choose. And I will if you are a fool." He drew out a small gold locket attached to the Brahminical thread he always wore, and began methodically to fit the curl into it, wondering if this cantrip of his--for it was nothing more--would impress Tara. Possibly. He had found such suggestions of ritual had an immense effect, especially with the womenkind who were for ever inventing new shackles for themselves; but her next remark startled him considerably.

"Is the _bibi's_ hair in there too?" she asked. There was a real anxiety in her tone, and he looked at her sharply, wondering what she would be at.

"No," he answered. In truth it was empty; and had been empty ever since he had taken a fair curl from it many years before; a curl which had ruined his life. The memory making him impatient of all feminine subtleties, he added roughly, "It will stay there for the present; but if you try _suttee_ nonsense I swear I'll tie it up in a cowskin bag, and give it to a sweeper to make broth of."

The grotesque threat, which suggested itself to his sardonic humor as one suitable to the occasion, and which in sober earnest was terrible to one of her race, involving as it did eternal d.a.m.nation, seemed to pa.s.s her by. There was even, he fancied, a certain relief in the face watching him complete his task; almost a smile quivering about her lips. But when he closed the locket with a snap, and was about to slip it back to its place, the full meaning of the threat, of the loss--or of something beyond these--seemed to overtake her; an unmistakable terror, horror, and despair swept through her. She flung herself at his feet, clasping them with both hands.

"Give it me back, master," she pleaded wildly. "Hinder me not again!

Before G.o.d I am _suttee!_ I am _suttee!_"

But this same Eastern clutch of appeal is disconcerting to the average Englishman. It fetters the understanding in another sense, and smothers sympathy in a desire to be left alone. Even Jim Douglas stepped back from it with something like a bad word. She remained crouching for a moment with empty hands, then rose in scornful dignity.

"There was no need to thrust this slave away," she said proudly.

"Tara, the Rajputni, will go without that. She will go to Holy Gunga and be purged of inmost sin. Then she will return and claim her right of _suttee_ at the master's hand. Till then he may keep what he stole."

"He means to keep it," retorted the master savagely, for he had come to the end of his patience. "Though what this fuss about _suttee_ means I don't know. You used to be sensible enough. What has come to you?"

Tara looked at him helplessly, then, wrapping her widow's veil round her, prepared to go in silence. She could not answer that question even to herself. She would not even admit the truth of the old tradition, that the only method for a woman to preserve constancy to the dead was to seek death itself. That would be to admit too much.

Yet that was the truth, to which her despair at parting pointed even to herself. Truth? No! it was a lie! She would disprove it even in life if she was prevented from doing so by death. So, without a word, she gathered up the crimson drapery and what lay on it. Then, with these pathetic sacrifices of all the womanhood she knew tight clasped in her widow's veil, she paused for a last salaam.

The incomprehensible tragedy of her face irritated him into greater insistence.

"But what is it all about?" he reiterated. "Who has been putting these ideas into your head? Who has been telling you to do this? Is it Soma, or some devil of a priest?"

As he waited for an answer the floods of moonlight threw their shadows together to join the perfumed darkness of the orange trees. The city, half asleep already, sent no sound to invade the silence.

"No! master. It was G.o.d."

Then the shadow left him and disappeared with her among the trees. He did not try to call her back. That answer left him helpless.

But as, after climbing the stairs, he pa.s.sed slowly from one to another of the old familiar places in the pleasant pavilions, the mystery of such womanhood as Tara Devi's and little Zora's oppressed him. Their eternal cult of purely physical pa.s.sion, their eternal struggle for perfect purity and constancy, not of the soul, but the body; their wors.h.i.+p alike of s.e.x and He who made it seemed incomprehensible. And as he turned the key in the lock for the last time, he felt glad to think that it was not likely the problem would come into his life again; even though he carried a long lock of black hair with him. It was an odd keepsake, but if he was any judge of faces his cantrip had served his purpose; Tara would not commit suicide while he held that hostage.

So, having scant leisure left, he hurried through the alleys to return the key. They were almost deserted; the children at this hour being asleep, the men away lounging in the bazaars. But every now and again a formless white figure clung to a corner shadow to let him pa.s.s. A white shadow itself, recalling the mystery he had been glad to leave unsolved; for he knew them to be women taking this only opportunity for a neighborly visit. Old or young, pretty or ugly? What did it matter? They were women, born temptresses of virtuous men; and they were proud of the fact, even the poor old things long past their youth. There was a c.h.i.n.k in a door he was about to pa.s.s. A c.h.i.n.k an inch wide with a white shadow behind it. A woman was looking out. What sort of a woman, he wondered idly? Suddenly the c.h.i.n.k widened, a hand crept through it, beckoning. He could see it clearly in the moonlight.

An old wrinkled hand, delicately old, delicately wrinkled, inconceivably thin, but with the pink henna stain of the temptress still on palms and fingers. A hand with the whole history of seclusion written on it. He crossed over to it, and heard a hurried breathless whisper.

"If the Huzoor would listen for the sake of any woman he loves."

It was an old voice, but it sent a thrill to his heart. "I am listening, mother," he replied, "for the sake of the dead."

"G.o.d send her grave peace, my son!" came the voice less hurriedly.

"It is not much for listening. I am pensioner, Huzoor. The King gave me three rupees, but now he is gone and the money comes not. If the Huzoor would tell those who send it that Ashraf-un-Nissa-Zainub-i-Mahal--the Huzoor may know my name, being as my father and mother--wants it. That is all, Huzoor."